Covid-19: The African identity and global powers…
Even amid the coronavirus pandemic, in May I would usually observe two important dates, 25th and 27th. I did not. May 25 is global Africa Day (we always marked it as Africa Liberation Day), the date on which the Organization of African Unity (OAU), later African Union (AU – July 9, 2002) was founded in 1963.
As president of the All-Africa Students’ Union in Europe in the 1990s led by my friend Prof Kimani Nehusi (then director of Africa Studies Centre-University of East London), other activists and champions, we would organise lectures, family events, rallies and marches.
Instead, on this day last month, George Floyd, an un-armed African-American was killed in police custody in Minneapolis, a common experience (especially) of men of African descent.
Meanwhile, May 27, 1980, is the date on which Milton Obote returned to Uganda from exile and landed in Bushenyi to a hero’s welcome. The date became a permanent feature on the national calendar as ‘Heroes Day’ to celebrate and remember all who died or experienced, were tortured, or survived and fought against the removal of Idi Amin’s brutal regime from January 1971 until Obote’s return and more.
Amin had been actively supported by Israel, Britain and the US to overthrow the government for many reasons. First was Obote’s leadership with Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda: frontline states fighting apartheid and total liberation of Southern Africa; the threat to the Commonwealth and, his covert support for pro-Lumumbist forces in Congo fighting US-backed regime after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
Delegated to deputy army commander Amin, and true, he got into unsanctioned deals, exceeded his mandate to enrich himself hence the so-called ‘gold-scandal’ that found him guilty and rightly cleared the president.
But Heroes Day these days pass silently because we have new ‘heroes’ on the block. Mr Museveni and NRA/M, knowing this history and playing opportunistic selves, elected to cuddle Anglo-American interests for entrenchment, survival and eventually turning into the most pro-imperialist agency in contemporary African history covering Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Sudan, Somalia and, less apparently further across the continent. In London and before perfecting the art in early 90s, Museveni expressed indifference to Ugandans ‘protesting outside’ as long as they continued to remit – at the time, ‘$30m every month to our national’ coffers!
But a good friend and wife to a retired US marine struck me on May 26, writing on her Facebook page how ‘tired we are’ of senseless killings of Africans in America and, ‘we have sacrificed for you-America…’ As both a victim and scholar of forced migration, I get the feelings but, also have an idea.
Unless and until we have leaders across Africa (and Diaspora nations) who are genuine and committed nationalists, pan-Africanists and, for whom African lives, property, natural resources and the long term strategic interest of African peoples matter, our people will continue to suffer, be humiliated, marginalised and die needlessly in the hands of the oppressor like in what a US diplomat told South Africa’s Tito Mboweni, ‘what you don’t see is much worse’.
The writer is former columnist with New African Magazine and former UPC spokesperson
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